Copenhagen Tales
Page 19
With all his experience plus some perseverance there was a
livelihood to be had, and—in short—he became a ticket
tout. There, we’ve said it now, and after this preamble it
shouldn’t look so bad, and won’t lessen the reader’s sym-
pathy for Avromche ‘Nattergal’. Ah yes, whence came the
nightingale nickname? It was all down to his failed singing
career. The Jews have a quite uncanny gift for bestowing
suchlike ironic nicknames. Madame Sass herself would on
occasion adapt and expand the soubriquet with a degree of
malice which did not imply any actual evil intent, but
merely went to show that friendship did not blind her to
her friend’s imperfections. Natten gal, she would say,
dagen ikke klog. Crazy at night, not too clever in the day.
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Leizer Suss died, and a while later Reb Schaie died too,
leaving his son a small capital, less than anticipated but
large enough to have enabled him, with his modest re-
quirements, to retire from active life and live off the
interest. But art, even in its obscurest antechambers, has
an allure which few who have once succumbed can ever
escape, not to mention that it is by no means easy for a
man to give up his habits and his occupation. There is
excitement even in gambling with theatre boxes; there are
triumphs which though small still quicken the heart; and
there are evenings when a person feels a certain impor-
tance, partakes in the life throbbing so strongly on the
stage, whose blaze is reflected in the glow on his face. And
access to all else may be denied, or one has neither
the desire nor the power to explore new paths. Thus
Avromche Nattergal continued working as a ticket tout.
There was perhaps one moment when he might have
given up his occupation, and that was shortly after his
father’s death, when in return for all the kindness shown
towards him he felt obliged to see Gitte married by offer-
ing her his hand and his fortune. But Gitte was not willing,
and her mother did not force her, no doubt because she
still had hopes for her daughter elsewhere: offer and rejec-
tion were amicably exchanged, and Avromche’s relations
with the household remained unaltered.
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He lived in Pilestræde on the third floor of a backyard
building where he lodged with a joiner’s family, or to be
more precise, right next to the joiner’s workshop, which
was why his clothes always smelled a little of wood shav-
ings, and why his rivals at the theatre called his box the
coffin. He got his revenge, and not without malice and wit
when the occasion arose, though he preferred to murmur
his apt remarks to himself with a little smile rather than
utter them out loud. It was sufficient for him to know he
could retaliate, and besides he felt that as a pious Jew and
someone who had not become a ticket tout out of necessity
he possessed an inner dignity which enabled him to rise
above the twitting and even the job itself.
At the time we are now approaching, that is around his
fiftieth year, anyone coming across him—in a long coat, or
in winter a greatcoat just as long, somewhat stooped, pale,
with a mild fixed slight smile, hands clasped inside his
sleeves, and with a quaint little sideways bob of the head as
though constantly and surreptitiously beating time, and
one eye or eyelid batting to the same beat—would instinc-
tively have gained the impression that here was a man
whose destiny was accomplished, who was peacefully and
quietly tottering the shorter or longer path to his grave.
Far from it! The storm in Avromche’s life was still to
come, and it was prompted by one single careless word, or
by the careless use of one single word: Suss.
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One evening when he arrived at the Sass home they
had changed their maid, and the moment Avromche saw
the new face in the doorway he quickly grasped what had
happened, and just as quickly, due to his old grudge
against what was for him the still new name of Sass, he
conceived the mischievous whim of asking: ‘Is madam
Suss at home?’ The words just slipped out like that. He
hadn’t really meant to inform the maid that her employers’
rightful name was Suss, though possibly he did half intend
her to overhear it, needing in that demonic moment a
confidant, just like king Midas’s barber who simply had
to reveal, if only to a little hillock in a field, that his master possessed ass’s ears. It was a joy for him to utter the word,
he got it off his chest; but the very next moment, when the
maid softly rejoined, ‘Yes, Madame Sass is at home,’ he
regretted it because he felt her answer to be a well-earned
rebuke and also feared she might inform her mistress. But
it was too late now. It would only make matters worse to
implore the maid not to say anything, and in any case
there was no time for that, for next moment he was in the
drawing room. All that evening and the next days he was
miserable. He said to himself: ‘Next time I call I know how
I shall be received. She’ll pretend she can’t see me, and if
I sneeze she’ll ask “Who’s that? Oh, it’s Pollok!”—because
now she’ll no longer be saying Avromche. And later in the
evening when she cuts up an orange she’ll pass round the
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pieces to the side where I’m not sitting, and there’ll be
nothing for me. What do I care about the orange? It’s her
look! It’s her face! My stomach is already in knots with
panic. And she’ll keep me in this state for a week, a
fortnight, possibly longer, until a good play comes along
and I beg and beg her to go. And then she’ll most likely say
“Oh yes, let Madame Suss take a nice trip to the theatre
again!” And then she’ll dart me such a glance—two nee-
dles in my heart! And all that for my damned mouth.’
He didn’t dare call round and didn’t dare stay away,
but in the end he put a brave face on it. He received the
usual simple almost casual welcome, and at first presumed
it was the calm before the storm, that they had carefully
prepared things so that when lightning struck it would be
that much more startling and devastating; but very soon it
became plain to him the barometer was set on fair weather,
and then he felt an enormous sense of relief and gratitude,
gratitude towards heaven and the maid, who had clearly
kept her mouth shut. One of the very next evenings he
found a pretext for calling again, and brought the maid a
present of a four shilling Christmas cake. At that time both
maids and Christmas cakes must have been better than
they ar
e now, for the maid accepted the cake with thanks,
and when the time came for her to light Avromche down-
stairs and see him out by the front door, she thanked him
yet again.
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Nightingale n 229
‘Don’t mention it’, said Avromche. ‘You are a good girl.
I won’t say why you are a good girl. You are a good girl.
What is your name?’
‘Emilie.’
‘Emilie. That’s a good name. How old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘Nineteen years old’, said Avromche, for the first time
taking a close look at her sweet, young, fresh face. He
added with naive satisfaction, ‘You look like a good girl
too. Very much so! Where are you from? Are you from
this city of ours?’
‘No, I’m from Nakskov.’
‘From Nakskov? What did your father do?’
‘He is a tanner.’
‘He’s still alive? So why are you not at home?’
‘Father married again, and my stepmother wanted me
out.’
‘Poor girl! You’re a good girl. Keep on being a good
girl.’
‘I certainly shall’, she replied. But whether both meant
the same by this exchange is doubtful. Avromche’s mean-
ing was that she should continue to keep mum about the
word Suss.
Without really being able to account for it, that night
and all the following days Avromche had the feeling he
had experienced something—something momentous.
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True, he had been rescued from great fear and danger, but
it was not just that. No matter how very unremarkable had
been his conversation with the maid it was still something
wholly novel in his life. When did he ever converse
with anyone about anything other than tickets, or the
desultory trivialities which constituted the entertainment
at Madame Sass’s? When had he ever asked about some-
thing with so much interest, when had an answer to a
question aroused in him a state of such tender animation
as this girl’s, whose youth made her at once so delighted
and delightful? There comes a time in every man’s life
when youth exerts a power over him he had no notion of
in his own youth, yet this power affected Avromche all the
more strongly for his being so wholly unaccustomed to
anyone looking at him and speaking to him with such
good will, in addition to being so pretty. The ageing
man’s soul lit up, as if in some curious way he had met a
sister he did not dare acknowledge—and moreover would
not wish to acknowledge; for it was so infinitely far from
his thinking that there could ever be anything closer
between himself and a Christian maidservant, or woman,
let alone an affair of the heart.
And yet he felt reinvigorated every time it happened
that the maid lit his way downstairs on his own and he
could conduct a conversation consisting of almost the
selfsame words as on that first evening. For him, who
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merely longed to hear her voice and once in a while steal a
glance at her fresh face, it scarcely mattered what he asked
her or what she answered, and he failed to notice how he
made himself ridiculous by always repeating the same
words. ‘You are from Nakskov?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And your father
is a tanner?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you have a stepmother who won’t
have you at home?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You are a good girl. Good night!’
And when in her laughing clear voice she replied ‘Good
night’, he rejoiced to carry the sound away with him.
He now had something beyond his usual humdrum life
to think of and long for, and the years dropped off him. He
walked with less of a stoop, returned people’s gaze with
greater openness, and shed a crustiness which had begun
to plague him with the onset of old age, and which had
already lost him customers. He went to the expense of a
new coat, and although there was a good and very natural
reason for this—the old one was so very old!—it attracted
notice, both on the corner of Lille Kongensgade and in
Kompagnistraede where Madame Sass lived. ‘What’s up
with Nattergal?’ people started asking. About anyone else,
even a ninety year old who had similarly altered, they
would have said, at least in jest, ‘He’s in love, he must be
courting’; but not once did any such jest occur to anyone
where Avromche was concerned, for all it was in earnest,
though Avromche himself had not the remotest inkling.
All he felt, for the first time in his life, was the joy of living,
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or rather for the first time since boyhood a pleasurable
longing inhabited his soul. The mainspring which his
father had snapped had, albeit in its own strange way,
recovered its tension. And it had come about in such a
gentle and gradual fashion, was so nearly trouble-free, so
naive that he himself was aware of it only to the extent that
he felt happy. Thus might a wood perhaps feel on a
November day when the sun shines as in spring.
At that time ‘Svend Dyring’s House’ had its first per-
formances, and was not only a great success, as is well
known, but aroused much emotional turmoil, especially
among the female section of the audience. Several ladies, it
was said, had fainted away from sentiment. The following
Friday night when the sons gathered at Madame Sass’s all
had seen the play and were enraptured with it, or in the grip
of the general rapture; even so they were agreed their
mother must on no account go and see it: she would not
be able to stand the emotion. Avromche was no great fan of
the play; it filled, indeed overfilled the boxes, and was from
that point of view a good thing, but from another, as far as
his own aesthetic preferences went, it was poor because it
was not an opera, and because what music it did contain
was lost on him; his heart, artistically speaking, was fully
taken up with ‘La Muette’, which was also playing at the
time, and above all by the ‘Slumber Aria’, and he regarded
the public’s enthusiasm for ‘Svend Dyring’s House’ as a fad.
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All the same, he wanted Madame Sass to visit his box and see
it and to be gripped by the same fad as everyone else, partly
because to him it was now dearer than ever to bring some joy
into this household, and partly also because by treating
Madame Sass and her daughter to tickets and bringing
them to and from the theatre he would at least for a moment
come across as a man of some importance to the family. He
was therefore unusually keen to contradict the sons’ opinion
that their mother would be unable to stand th
e emotion.
‘Not stand it?’ he said. ‘What is there to stand? What’s
there to faint about? It’s beyond me! A woman fainted in
the next door box, that’s very true. But why did she faint?
Because she was a fat brewer’s wife, and because Henrik-
sen packed too many in. Henriksen is a retseiach. But will
I be packing too many in when a good friend is to be there,
and in my box will Madame Sass not get a good front
bench seat and no crowding in front or behind or from
either side? Not stand it? Nonsense!’
However, one of the sons repeated his assertion, and
backed it up by referring to the play’s content. He cited
fairly accurately:
Every mother knows for herself, ’tis true,
What the milk of my breasts may do for you.
retseiach: ruthless fellow.
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‘How could Mother bear to hear and see that?’ he added.
‘Why not?’ cried Avromche. ‘Does a person in the box
have to be female just to know that? Am I a woman, yet
don’t I know that somebody dead and gone and buried
and no more than a ghost cannot have milk in her breast?
If I know that then your mother knows it too, and she
won’t faint.’
Another of the sons said with quiet gravity: ‘Mother
will think of our blessed father, olaum ve scholaum. That
moment where the deceased walks off and Mr. Dyring
reaches out after her imploring her to stay, that’s when
Mother will think of our blessed father as he lay in his
funeral best.’
‘God forbid!’ cried Avromche. ‘That must never hap-
pen! Never on my neschommo. But is your mother not a
reasonable lady? Will she not be sensible and say to herself
“One of the wives has to go, otherwise the man will have
two wives—so which shall it be?” Who else but the one
who is dead and buried?’
All Avromche’s eloquence might have been to no avail
had not the sons chosen a line of argument which led to
precisely the opposite conclusion to the one anticipated;
for women do in fact relish emotion, though they are loath
olaum ve scholaum: God rest his soul.
neschommo: soul.
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to admit to it. Madame Sass said, with dignity: ‘I’ll not
think about your father, olaum ve scholaum. Why should